A chronological listing of my site specific installations and performance works. Please click on the image or title to see a more detailed description.

The Demon Under the Bed

Work in progress (2017). Performance created as part of The Women Artist Team (T.W.A.T.) collaboration, The Bedroom.

Heaven is the Most Dangerous Place of All

Heaven is the Most Dangerous Place of All was an installation included in the exhibition Starting From Scratch at the Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College. Curated by Mara Baldwin, the exhibiton was built around the 100-year anniversary of the publication of the novel “Herland” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The utopian novel, considered to be a feminist work, is about three men who come across an island inhabited solely by women. “Starting From Scratch” is based on the novel’s themes of feminism, socialist values and how it is everyone’s responsibility to care about one another in order to achieve a better society.

My installation was designed to provoke conversation about how we perceive utopia and our role in creating utopia here and now. Following the knit yellow stripe throughout the exhibition, it led to a series of pockets mounted on the wall, each containing a question or phrase designed to provoke conversation. Then the stripe led the visitor to a tent where one could sit in quiet contemplation or have a discussion with others.

A Fierce Heart is A Tender Heart (Robyn Love's Fun House of Vulnerability)

Billed as a "Fun House of Vulnerability" AFHIATH was like a giant fort made with your parent's afghans. It included four rooms, each with different activities designed to encourage the audience to push their expectations and ideas of themselves. At Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Transcending Potash

A site specific installation created for Street Meet Festival in Saskatoon, SK, in July 2013 (organized by Keeley Haftner in association with AKA Gallery). I created a tent - the Utopia Tent - for visitors to enter. First, however, they washed their feet using river water and soap made from potash (a salt that is a major resource and economic force in Saskatchewan). Once inside, we discussed our versions and visions of utopia and the notion of temperance.

Saskatoon was founded as a temperance colony on the prairies by a group based in Toronto, ON, in the mid-1800s. Although the word "temperance" means moderation, the movement became one of total abstinence. Not surprisingly, the original mandate of the colony lasted barely more than a decade. However, one can still see remnants of the notion of temperance and utopia in Saskatoon today.

Visitors to the Utopia Tent. Saskatoon, July 2013.

SpinCycle

In the last several years, the process of creating my site-specific works has led to collaborations with the intended audience and others. Increasingly, this interaction has become central to the work and sometimes becomes its culmination. My performances are always participatory and, thus, lead to unexpected outcomes. Impossible to rehearse, they take advantage of what is possible when an idea is offered spontaneously to a group of people (for better or worse).

SpinCycle

Performance presented at The Brooklyn Museum as part of their First Saturday program, April 2013. Participants pedaled the bicycle, which caused the spinning wheel to turn and I spun yarn from wool roving. As they pedaled, people looked in a mirror placed strategically on the floor. They could see my face and I could see their's but we could not see our own face. Before getting on the bike, I offered them a prompt written on a card and, based on the prompt, they told me a story about themselves into the mirror while we spun yarn together.

Avenue of Trees

Works created outside of any specific project based on various ideas and themes using a variety of media, including porcelain, yarn, paper, photography and video.

The Avenue of Trees

Installation view, Cheongju, South Korea. 2011

The Avenue of Trees

Video made from footage and stills of the installation in Cheongju. Approx. five minutes long. Edited by Susan Forste. Music used by permission from Daorum.

Avenue of Trees

The Avenue of Trees was an installation for the city of Cheongju, South Korea, as part of the 2011 Cheongju Craft Biennale Exhibition. Working with over 140 people, we created 700 handknit and crocheted rectangles that were installed along a five-km roadway into the city. The piece of knitting were installed in a rhythmic, musical way that was designed to guide visitors to the Biennale exhibition.

The House Museum

The House Museum

Located in Gillams, Newfoundland, THM was run from 2005 to 2010 as a tourist attraction for the summer months. Each year, a special project was presented including collaborations with neighbors and other local residents, artist-in-residence projects and the annual "Gillams Day" event that featured a pie baking contest, jelly contest and craft demonstrations.

Entry Foyer

The entry foyer included a video installation and guest table that held brochures and buttons with the phrase "why are you here?" which was the motto of THM. The wall paper design was handmade from photographs of houses that one sees as they drive up the North Shore Highway to THM (36 different images). Each image was color printed and glued to the wall, then stenciled around to create a wallpaper-like pattern that is similar to one that might typically be in a house of this era.

Grand Opening celebration, 2005

THM opened to the public in 2005 with a celebration that invited local residents and tourists to mix together. Pictured here (left to right): Rev. Edward House (brother of Wilfred House who built the house now used as THM), Eddie Blanchard (Mayor of Gillams), Gerry Byrne (MP for the Bay of Islands) and Gerry Byrne, Jr.

The Gift Shop

The gift shop in THM was a bureau in which I kept handmade items that I gave to visitors before they left the Museum. I was especially interested in how local hospitality would be commodified as Newfoundland's economy was increasingly directed towards tourism. To counter this trend, I gave gifts rather than sold them. It was interesting to explore the power dynamic of gift giving. For example, some people were so unsettled by this shift from the typical museum experience that they refused my gift, while other times I decided not to give a gift if I felt that the visitor did not appreciate what was on offer.

Unconditional Yes

Creating a curtain-off space in the middle of the gallery as a "living room", I invited students, faculty and staff to sit with me and knit while talking about when they had ever (if ever) responded to something with an unconditional yes. The Simmons community was invited to bring objects that symbolized this commitment and hang them on the gallery walls surrounding the living room. As the exhibition progressed, the walls filled with objects and stories. The stories were collected in a book in the gallery.

Make It A Pencil

Make It A Pencil

Crocheted yarn, 2009. Crocheted cover for a 10,000 gallon water tank on the roof of 395 Broadway in Manhattan.

Commissioned by D&AD to promote their Pencil Awards, the project took nine cases of yarn, five very fast-working assistants and three weeks to make. It was installed for two days on the water tower before being removed. It was sent to a needlework conference in Minneapolis, MN, where it was cut up and made into blankets for Warm Up America, an organization that donated handmade blankets to families in need.

Make it a Pencil - New York

90 second video made by D&AD for Make it a Pencil.

The Knitted Mile

The Knitted Mile

Handknit yarn made to look like a regulation road stripe in Dallas, TX. 2009.

The Knitted Mile was created as part of the exhibition, Gestures of Resistance, at Grey Matter in Dallas, TX (curated by Shannon Stratton and Judith Leeman). Working with 90 knitters from around North America, we created a stripe that was installed on a roadway in Dallas for two hours. The stipe was collected off the road and piled into the gallery, exhibited along with photographs of everyone who assisted with its creation.

It was later shown as part of the exhibition, Yarn Theory (curated by Martha Lewis), at PS. 122 in New York, NY.

The Knitted Mile

Handknit yarn, 2008.

Preparing for installation on the street in Dallas, TX.

The Knitted Mile

Handknit yarn, 2008.

Installation view. For more photographs of the installation, please click here

House Study/Handmade

House Study/Handmade

As Artist in Residence at Wave Hill (a botanical garden in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, NY), I collected materials from the staff and the gardens to make natural dyes for wool. After dyeing the wool, I would card and spin it in my studio space. Visitors became fascinated with this process and began to ask to be taught how to card and spin. In the end, myself and several volunteers taught literally hundreds of people to work with wool.

Each skein of yarn that was made was given to a visitor with the promise that they would knit or crochet a hat and return with it to Wave Hill. Over 50 hats were collected and a group trade followed - each person ended up with a hat, just not their own. Leftover hats were donated to a Bronx-based shelter for women.

Spindle 7

Spindle 7

For months in 2009, each time I rode the #7 train from Queens into Manhattan, I carried wool and drop spindles in my bag. As I spun, I engaged with interested passengers about what I was doing, and if they were willing, I taught them to spin. Each new spinner left the train with a bag of wool and a spindle to take home. It was my belief that spinning wool is an activity that spans cultures and crosses many borders. The #7 train, which serves the most ethnically diverse county in the United States was the perfect place to test this theory.

Spindle 7 was funded, in part, by the re-grant program of Queens Council on the Arts.